Castle in the Sky: Kisekae - Palette Tutorial

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Palette Tutorial

Although I've addressed this in my basic tutorial, this is a more in-depth look at how to make palettes. I hope it helps--let me know!

Please Note: This assumes usage of Windows 95/98, Paint, Notepad (or any facsimile thereof), WSVC, and PlayFKiss 0.81 or later.

First things first, the background color of all of your files will be the background color in your set. Make sure it's the same in all of them, and that you don't make any clothing the same color as the bg--it'll turn out transparent. ;)
When using WSVC, you draw black rectangles around the objects in order to let WSVC read them as objects to be turned into cels. You MUST leave at least one pixel between the black lines of the rectangle and the shirt, doll, whatever it is you're putting in it. Once again, make sure that the background color IN the box is the same as the one OUTSIDE the box.
I usually draw all the clothes and the base doll before I begin making the palette file. Then, I create a new BMP file by taking one of my old one and clearing the old picture out, leaving just the background, and saving under a new name. This is because Paint (at least on my computer) is kind of picky about its internal palettes, which are evil things and shall not be discussed.
Then I open up all my other files. This is a bit tedious, but I take a small sample of every color of clothing in my files and turn it into a block of color. I put all the blocks together and, leaving one blank for the background color, draw a rectangle around it as if it were a regular BMP that I'd turn into a cel.
WSVC makes your palette file(s) as well. Take palette.BMP (or whatever you called it) and open it up as a normal file in WSVC. Go to Edit, Cell Name (or just click on the little gray box at the lower left hand corner of the picture), and change it to PALETTE. You'll also need to go to Edit, Color Palette Name, and change that to a palette (.kcf) name you'll remember as well--like PALETTE ;).
Now go to File and click Make All. This should create a CEL file, a KCF file, and a WSC file.
The CEL is the actual cel that shows up as an object in the doll.
The KCF file is the palette file that tells each object what colors to use.
The WSC file tells WSVC what it's done to the BMP, so if you load up that BMP file again, it will have the CEL name and other things fixed already.
You can delete the CEL and WSC files called PALETTE, because all you really want from this is the KCF.
Now, when you make the rest of your objects, just make sure they all have the same background and relatively same colors as in your palette (Sometimes, when WSVC is feeling nice, it'll ignore if you add a couple of colors in your clothing files that aren't in the palette file, and leave them in the pretty colors they are ;) Don't make a new palette file for each cel--that would be horrible, worse than no palette at all! ;)